Thursday, March 14, 2013

News of Press conference and Assembly bill to block privacy violations of children

Great news! Yesterday, Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell introduced a bill that would block the NY State Education Department and DOE from sharing our children's confidential data with the Gates-funded corporation called inBloom Inc., and would block inBloom from disclosing it with for-profit vendors without parental consent.

The bill is A6059, please call your Assemblymembers today and ask them to co-sponsor. Your Assembly member can be found here.

Our press conference on the steps of Tweed this morning was terrific. Among those who spoke out against this reckless and outrageous plan to commercialize our children's highly sensitive information without parental consent included civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, CMs Steve Levin, Tish James, and Daniel Dromm, and mayoral candidate Tom Allon.

Parents Tory Frye, Karen Sprowal, Molly Sackler, and Lisa Shaw were among the fifty or so parents who attended, and expressed their personal outrage that their children's names, grades, emails, phone numbers, test scores, health, special education and disciplinary records would be so carelessly exposed, without even consulting them about it. We also showed how all this data is being provided to vendors, with no thought of how this is may stigmatize and endanger our children's privacy and their future success. Video soon (thanks to Justin Wedes!) Our press release, with quotes from many other public officials, is below.

1 comment:

Ellen
said...

Several years ago, the DOE took away access for the Stuyvesant HS PA to the school's mailing list, claiming privacy considerations based on law (FERPA), so that the PA could no longer have access to its own members! Yest now they are willing to give that to commerical interests!